


and a blue corvette

by jumpfall



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Iron Man 3 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-05
Updated: 2013-05-05
Packaged: 2017-12-10 11:51:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/785755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jumpfall/pseuds/jumpfall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seven moments shared before, during, and beyond the events of Iron Man 3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and a blue corvette

**Author's Note:**

> Why write one tag when you can write many?
> 
> The title is a reference to the opening song Blue (Da Ba Dee), by Eiffel 65.

1.

Midway over the Atlantic, Tony fishes two earpieces out of a compartment in Rhodey’s suit and drops one in her hand. By the time she has it fitted into place Tony is on the line with Bruce, talking a mile a minute. "--and here's Pep now. You go green when you get angry, she turns red when she gets stressed, it's Christmas, together you're festive. You two be calm now, I gotta do a thing." He clicks off the line just as quickly, switching on to another call. Presumably he is updating the President and the Joint Chiefs on the resolution of the situation. Rhodey's mostly caught up, as Iron Patriot returned ahead of the military vehicles dispatched to pick them up and contain the scene with an offer of a fast exit that both had been more than willing to take.

"So," Bruce says.

"So."

"The first thing you'll want to do is order offensively tacky fine china, preferably in bulk."

"Will the threat of breaking it keep me calm?"

"No, but it'll be that much more satisfying when the dam breaks," Bruce says in the dry, self-deprecating tone he uses when he's trying to understate what would otherwise be a grandiose statement. Pepper laughs so hard she almost falls the few thousand feet into the water below, Tony's only concession to the idea that she might lose control over Extremis at some point along the flight back. She'd never fall, of course; even in their current states Tony's grip around her waist is unfailingly careful.

-

2.

"Rhodes. Rhodey. John Jacob Jingleheimer James. JARVIS got a little overzealous with the intruder alert, Dummy is hiding in the corner, and I need you to swing by the house and enter the code to end the lockdown so I can let a mouse free."

" _Okay._ "

-

3.

The call comes in during one of the rare lulls of the aftermath, while Tony and Happy are watching Downton Abby on the widescreen TV in the Maria Stark PT wing the foundation donated several years prior. The room is empty aside from the two of them and a physical therapist who is equal parts professional and unforgiving, handpicked by Hawkeye to shorten their recovery times to the low end of the estimates. When she gives them a break to catch their breath, they collapse into massage chairs to ease the ache of muscles tight from disuse being strengthened. Tony's phone vibrates in his pocket.

"Who is this?" Tony answers curtly, as if JARVIS hasn't done the legwork and answered that question already.

"Harley," the kid says. "JARVIS gave me your phone number while I was fixing his voice."

"Of course he did," Tony mutters.

"So, I tried to build a zipline like you left me the drawings--."

"--blueprints--."

"-- for, but the basket is caught in the track."

"Boss?" Happy asks, pausing the show.

"Five minutes," Tony mouths back at him. "Okay, so here's what you're going to do...." he says to the kid, easing out of the chair to retrieve his tablet from the table across the room.

In the background, Happy can hear the kid take that as license to continue his barrage. "My mom says thank you for all the things, but I still can't drive the car until I'm 16. I saw you give a press conference with Captain America. Did he really fight Nazis? Was he really frozen for all those years? Could anyone else still be down there? Could I get stuck in the ice one day?"

-

4.

"FYI: Aliens invaded New York, I ate shwarma with your favorite Boy Wonder, and you and I need to have a serious discussion about where in the chain of command the decision to go nuclear is made. I don't want to talk about it. I bought you your favorite brewery for your birthday last year, bring beer."

" _Okay._ "

-

5.

Tony's en route to the house salvage site off the coast when a young woman trips on the curb in front of his car and stumbles into the nearest wall. He takes in her erratic breathing and clenched fists and cuts the breaks without thinking about it, pulling off to the side of the road. She whirls on him almost immediately, assessing him as a threat.

He holds his hands out to his sides, palms facing towards her. "I'm not going to touch you," he says calmly, keeping his distance. "I am going to call a friend who has some experience with situations like these. JARVIS, you there?”

"Always, sir," the AI responds from the car, broadcasting through an external microphone.

"Standard protocol."

"It is 3:11 pm on Tuesday, January 21st," JARVIS begins without further prompting. "The temperature is 45 F with a windspeed of 5 knots coming from the northeast. The most current forecasts predict light showers this evening with a chance of freezing rain overnight." Tony doesn’t have as tight a handle on his own anxiety yet as he would like, but he’s picked up a few tricks along the way. Among them is choosing a single voice from the many to focus on, grounding him in the present. He hopes she's got a thing for British accents.

"Any delays in Cap's travel plans?"

"I am currently monitoring his flight, which is delayed out of New York and currently scheduled to land in one hour and three minutes. Agents Romanoff and Barton are also listed as passengers. Dinner reservations have been changed accordingly."

Out of the corner of his eye, Tony sees the woman's knees give out. She hits the ground hard, but he knows better than to approach her and steps back to lean against the side of the Porsche instead, blocking her from view of cars passing by. It’s not a spectator sport.

He keeps up the conversation with JARVIS while she gets her breathing under control, huffing out a weak laugh when Tony suggests they cancel their evening plans and instead have Hawkeye clean out the prize section of the nearest arcade. Pepper's waterlogged bunny surfaced two days into the salvage and is sitting in a storage locker somewhere. The least he can do is win it some friends.

She gets to her feet just as the wind is starting to pick up, the darkening sky overhead casting deep shadows on the ground surrounding them. The storm clouds high above their heads appear to converge almost directly over top of them. "Thanks," she says quietly, eyes going wide when she registers who he is.

"Don't mention it," he replies just as softly. "No, seriously. I managed to leave the paparazzi on the East coast two days ago and they haven't gotten the memo yet. I'd like to keep it that way."

-

6.

"Followup to the last message: my lawyers are getting the marriage annulled and I'll have divorce papers for you the next time you swing by. We might need to avoid Vegas for awhile."

" _Okay._ "

-

7.

Pepper checks in with Bruce every few days, who has taken to emailing her increasingly ridiculous stress reducing techniques from the account Tony had Stark Industries set up for him and the other Avengers after the Chitauri invasion.

"You have got to be kidding me," she tells him one morning, the current article of choice still projected on the wall in front of her. It's just after 7:00 AM in Kinshasa, the earliest she'd felt comfortable calling from New York despite Tony's assertion that Bruce sleeps very little, anyways.

"I wish I was," he says. The kettle whistles before she can respond and she pads out to the kitchen.

"I've taken up camomile tea," she says while she assembles her cup methodically. Giving up coffee is the first of many concessions she has made to keep her stress levels under control while Tony mainlines the last twenty years of advancements in biomedical engineering. Sleep is one she hadn't expected. JARVIS keeps the kitchen dimly lit 24/7 now, boiling water for Pepper and assembling grilled cheese sandwiches for Tony without being asked. Sometimes they eat breakfast together in the early hours of the morning when one of both of them have woken earlier than expected, sharing a moment of intimate understanding.

"My sympathies," Bruce says, whose feelings on Pepper's choice in tea are well-known by this point.

"Hey Pepper, can we try this?" Tony calls out from the living room. She learns around the corner to see he has Bruce's email on one screen and the article on another, never mind that this is her personal rather than business correspondence. If they were a different couple, she wonders if it would bother her.

"No."

"I am 700% sure I want to see you wearing--."

"--still on the phone, Tony," Bruce says.

"-- Rhodey's swinging by in a few hours, but I'm pretty sure if we start now I'll be presentable for the meeting with the FBI. Can you get the--?"

"Christ, this was not what I had in mind when I sent you that link," Bruce says. "I'm hanging up now."


End file.
